The Silver Age Of The Teen Titans Volume Two!

In the second volume of Teen Titans - The Silver Age the team really come into their own. They had begun a trio of boy sidekicks to try and milk a little more value out of the success of the Justice League and with the addition of Wonder Girl they became a sturdy quartet of performers. Speedy showed up from time to time to help the team succeed in its primary mission of responding the woes and conerns of teens in trouble. Bob Haney's scripts are imaginative, but his dialogue can make the reader wince with the sometimes, painful attempts to evoke hip banter. The art had always been good with Bruno Premiani, Irv Novick, Bill Molno, and Nick Cardy making the team look good. Cardy takes the reins again at the beginning of this second volume for some of the teams most iconic tales, but changes are in wind. 

It's a weird tale when the Titans must head into orbit to rescue a Deejay who has run afoul of invading aliens. He's able to send cryptic messages to Earth which Robin decodes. The aliens are pretty nasty pieces of work, and the team has a battle on its hands to make the Earth safe for AM rock music and more beside.  

"A Christmas Happening" is a delightful yarn with the Teen Titans taking part in a modern update of the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol. This time it's a miser named Mr. Scrounge who gets tied up with some smugglers led by Mr. Big and when Scrounge's much put upon employee learns too much he finds dangers. His son, a youngster in a wheelchair contacts the Titans and they assume some ghostly disguises to try and bring Mr.Scrounge around. It works and it ends up that a happy holiday is assured for everyone save for Mr. Big and his thugs. 

"Requiem for a Titan" is one of the strangest stories yet in this series and one of the darkest in the Silver Age. A mysterious being from Limbo named "The Gargoyle" taunts Robin to reveal his identity and climb into an open grave, a grave surrounded by graves for his Titan allies. The story is told mostly in flashback and we see that the nefarious Gargoyled uses strange powers to create suspicion and discord among the Titans. This makes them vulnerable to his will and in the end only Robin can win the day, if he can struggle against his feelings of guilt over having possibly sent an innocent man to jail. Weird and rather heavy is this one indeed. This is editor George Kashdan's final issue as editor. 

It's another weird one with a folk singer narrator telling us how the Titans had to become hippies to save a young runaway and his girlfriend from a gang of thieves who are taking advantage of those kids who feel the need to drop out. The Titans are pretty square pegs but Haney tries doubly hard to pound them into these "hip" roles. Thisone groans more than a bit. New editor Dick Giordano, fresh from his gig at Charlton steps in. That changes are coming to the team is indicated by the shattering of the logo symbolically on the cover. 

The sixteenth issue could well have been an episode of The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits. The Titans go to a local town and its high school where a teen has come under criticism for claiming the Earth is about to invaded from another dimension, something he learned when he accidently entered said other dimension. These purple "zombies" are pretty scary as they chase the Titans around a version of the high school in that other dimension. The cover for this issue is one of the very best that DC every produced, and in fact most of the covers from this run by Cardy are outstanding. We'll be seeing more of these "zombies" in issues to come. 

The Mad Mod returns in issue seventeen to give the Titans all kinds of trouble when they visit London. Robin gets lost in the Tower of London but the remaining three members of the team struggle mightily to stop the Mad Mod's crimes despite mysterious losses of power for them all. It's bizarre adventure that has the team travel to Stonehenge, Loch Ness and other famous sites to try and bring the villain to heel. Nick Cardy's artwork in this one is spectacular.  I got the feeling from Haney's story that he was trying to evoke the hectic and zany feel of A Hard Day's Night or some film of that genre. 

This is one of my favorite Teen Titans issues. Starfire is a wonderful creation, the Soviet "counterpart" to the Titans the story says. He and the Titans don't get along at first as they are forced to work together to chase a jewel thief, and most of the story keeps you guessing at motivations. The artwork by Bill Draut in this issue is fantastic, clean and spare and effectively presenting the script by newcomers Marv Wolfman and Len Wein. More on these guys later. 

I've always liked the notion of Soviet counterparts for established heroes. Whereas a Nazi duplicate is always evil, the Soviet variety is most often handled as noble but just differently motivated. A far cry from the "Red Baiting" days of the 50's. Marvel had done it with the Red Guardian in The Avengers a year previous and Yuri Brevlov is presented in the Incredible Hulk as more a rival to Nick Fury than an out and out villain at about the same time as this Titans issue hit the stands. 

Mike Friedrich is the scripter of issue nineteen, but the headline is that this issue features the team of penciler Gil Kane and inker Wally Wood. These two greats always worked well together and the art here is typically robust and outstanding. The Titans along with occasional fifth wheel Speedy are battling a young super-villain named "Punch" who is plotting to kill the Titans to prove to his superiors that he's ready for the bigtime -- the Justice League of America. This issue is remarkable also because Aqualad steps away from the time claiming he needs to care for Aquababy with Aquaman on his quest for his lost love Mera. The new regular logo at last appears after several issues with creative but makeshift logos. 

Teen Titans twenty is the stuff of legends. The world was changing and so were comic books. Institutional racism had for much too long been commonplace in the United States and some years before the Civil Rights Act had removed those official barriers, at least legally. Temperamentally the country was still quite unsettled on race especially in the South where protests were vigorous throughout the decade of the 60's. DC had recently purged its writing corps because the older writers had wanted some health benefits. So with the likes of Gardner Fox and Arnold Drake gone, new writers were needed, and fanboys Marv Wolfman and Len Wein stepped in. They got the go ahead for a script which dealt with race relations and introduced a black superhero. (They'd just done a Soviet one for heaven's sake.) But that proved a bridge too far for some of the head honchos and the story was canned. The remnants were plucked by Neal Adams who fashioned a new story with some of the old art removing the race elements. His rewrite also referenced two previous Titan villains and suggested they worked for a mastermind who himself was working for the Dimensional aliens the team had battled in issue sixteen. 

For more on this epic tale of comic book intrigue check out this link. While Marv and Len were blacklisted (ironically) for a time they did continue to do work for DC and as we know became significant contributers to the fortunes of the company for many years to come. Marv in fact comes back sooner than later as we shall see. 

The Teen Titans (with Speedy now on board as Aqualad's replacement) find themselves in an issue of Bob Haney's The Brave and the Bold. Under a cover by Irv Novick, this story drawn by Neal Adams has Batman and Robin confronted with a new addition to the Wayne household. Bruce takes on the responsibility of a contentious juvenile delinquent thanks to an arrangement made by his father and another man. The boy proves to be trouble and eventually gets involved with a scheme that is bilking millions from one of Wayne's oil industrial concerns. The Titans step in to help mentor the kid but it comes very hard and it's a good thing they are on hand for the finale. 

Neal Adams continues as both writer and artist for the next few issues of Teen Titans. In this issue the battle against the invaders from "Dimension X" heats up. The aliens have maintained an arm of criminals in our dimension and the Titans alongside new heroes Hawk and Dove find their separate missions have led them to the headquarters of this gang. We learn by-the-by that the cases of "Honey Bun" and the "Scorcher" had been attempts by this gang. This is an all-out action issue starting in the middle of the fight and never stopping. By the end the teams have split up and Robin and Kid Flash have been taken into the other dimension. Hawk and Dove step out since their mission is done and their powers disappear.

The battle against the alien invaders from Dimension X continues under both  the writing and artistic hand of Neal Adams. The team is reunited in a strange territory between Dimension X and our own. This other area has been the reason the aliens couldn't invade directly. By the end of the battle the intelligence of this new dimension has coalesced into a sentient being able to protect its territory and promises the Titans that the aliens will never be able to cross again. The Titans now together again head home to mend their wounds. I simply love Nick Cardy's cover for this issue. It plays with the logic of a comic book cover very nicely. 

This issue is different in that we get a back-up story. Written by Marv Wolfman and drawn by Gil Kane and Cardy this is Wonder Girl's origin tale, and we learn she was an orphan taken in by the Amazons and given the powers of Wonder Woman. With the Amazons gone at the time she has no home, and the other Titans help her find an apartment and she decides other changes are needed and makes for herself a new distinctive costume. 

Bob Haney is back in the twenty-third issue, and he joins penciler Gil  Kane and inker and cover artist Nick Cardy for the last two issues in this collection. The first story has the Titans back in helping teens mode, but this time the teen is a sad but successful rock singer who is put upon by his manager and his distant relatives. He runs off to South America to find his long lost uncle and the Titans head South to find and save him. There are headhunters and hints of ancient treasure before this rousing actioner is finished. 

The iconic cover by Cardy inspired New Titans artist Geore Perez many years later when Wonder Girl underwent yet another transformation.

The Teen Titans head to the snowy slopes to wrap up their Silver Age adventures when they search for lost skiers and later battle to keep the resort and its adjacent properties from falling into nefarious hands. A typical Titans adventure, but well rendered with exciting layouts by Kane and creamy inks by Cardy. As he had begun their adventures, so did Haney wrap them up. The  Bronze Age beckons as the decade of the 70's looms. 

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